


Asymptomatic Bond Disorder

by InsaneTrollLogic



Category: Scrubs (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Soulmates, fictional medical BS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-29 20:03:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21415897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsaneTrollLogic/pseuds/InsaneTrollLogic
Summary: Considering Dr. Cox can't actually feel the effects of a soulmate bond, it's not surprising he completely missed meeting his match.
Relationships: Perry Cox & Carla Espinosa Turk, Perry Cox/John "JD" Dorian
Comments: 22
Kudos: 227





	Asymptomatic Bond Disorder

**Author's Note:**

> (Will edit more heavily at some point when I'm not trying to do NaNo for a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT STORY)

It’s not often I wind up paged to a patients room for _comfort _more than consult. Really, if the patient needs a doctor with my bedside manner, they’ve got to be either a masochist or…

I skim over the chart and confirm it. I feel the growl to build low in my throat. That wasn’t even supposed to be common knowledge, but it always sneaks out. Like it’s stitched into my lab coat along with my name.

“The Gomes kid?” Carla says.

“Why in God’s green Earth would you let some jackass page me about a case that already has a diagnosis?”

“Because it’s a one in ten thousand diagnosis,” Carla says immediately. “And because, believe it or not, you are a success story.”

“I’m an emotionally crippled narcissist who spends half of his nights alone with a bottle of scotch.” But she’s right. I’ve dealt with the damn thing my whole life and I check a lot of the boxes for functional human being. Moderately successful career. Slightly less successful, but still solid long-term relationship with Jordan, at least pre-sabotage. Not even a hint of suicidal ideation.

“The kid’s sixteen, she just needs to see that there’s a life out there without, you know…” Carla trails off.

“Without a soulmate,” I finish. “I hear ya. What are the odds we get lucky and she’s a massive asshole whose soulmate is better off without them?”

Carla frowns. “Okay, maybe I should get JD to talk to her.”

I snatch the chart back. “Freda thinks every floozy he’s ever laid eyes on him could be The One. That’s the last thing she needs to hear. I’ll talk to her.”

“Be nicer to JD!” Carla tuts. “You know that stuff bothers him. Especially coming from you.”

I want it to be well-known that the patient’s already crying when I walk in. According to her chart, she’s sixteen years old, visiting the ICU because she’d blacked out for almost ten minutes following a collision in her high school soccer game. I wince. Trauma induced. At least I had the good fortune to be born with the disorder.

She’s so lost in her hiccupping sobs that she doesn’t even notice me coming in.

Okay, maybe this is a case I can handle after all.

I whistle sharply drawing her attention.

“So,” I say, drawing out the word for two syllables. “You’ve got a minor concussion, no reason to think there might be lingering impairment. You’re not dying, you’re not going to need medication past a couple Advil and you’re in here sobbing over someone you’ve never met.”

She turns off the waterworks, or at least tries to. Her breath is hitching when she says, “You. Don’t. Understand.”

I flip her chart closed and sit down next to her bed. “Oh I understand all too well, sister. Asymptomatic Bond Disorder, right? Been living that particular nightmare since I was born.”

“You’re…”

“ABD, that’s right. And I’ll tell you right now, when you see all the crap so-called soulmates put each other through, you might start thinking you dodged a bullet.”

The tears are definitely gone now. Her back is straight, a shiner is blooming around her eyes, her hands are fisted in the bedsheets. “Look, just because it’s okay for you not to have a soulmate doesn’t mean—”

“Oh-ho, wait a second here sister. You still have a soulmate. You just don’t get a one-way all-access pass to every little thing they’re thinking and if you’re r_e_ally honest with yourself, you probably don’t _want_ that. Because I don’t know about you, but I have a hard enough time sorting myself out without throwing someone else into the mix. We’re the lucky ones, kiddo. I mean our match could be dead. Or a serial killer. Or a just a big old bucket of crazy.”

“Kind of like you,” the kid mutters caustically.

“There you go, getting the hang of it, are we? You seem like you got enough spine to realize you’re always going to be good enough. Solo, paired, whatever, it doesn’t matter. And I understand you’re not okay right now but you’re damn well gonna get there.”

The kid’s quiet for a few minutes, chewing on her lip. I see the wheels turning over in her head and then she asks the question, the stupid, destructive question, “But how will I know if I’ve found them?”

“There’s a blood test.” Years of seeing the shrink is probably the only thing that keeps me from actually snapping. “But here’s the inside scoop, if you’ve found the person you think is willing to put up with you for the long hall, you don’t need the blood test. And if you take it anyway, well, don’t be surprised if it comes back negative.”

Me and Jordan were supposed to be it. The odds of two people with ABD meeting up and being able to tolerate each other were astronomical. Especially considering neither of us have what you would consider an easy-to-tolerate kind of personality. I thought we’d won the jackpot. Thought that this was hope the world evened out it. We didn’t get the emotional read off of each other, but god knows that would have resulted in some kind of monstrous feedback loop that ended with both of us even more miserable than we were when we started.

“Have you met them then?” the kid asks suddenly, her blue eyes wide. “Your soulmate?”

I hesitate for just a beat. “No.”

Jordan and I had said the blood test was a formality. We’d just found out Ted hadn’t managed to divorce us and the whole situation had that slightly shiny rom-com meant-to-be vibe to it so we’d decided to do the test. To bury any lingering doubts.

The results had been a disappointment, but they hadn’t actually been a surprise.

_Well, _Jordan had said. _Not a bad run. _

Divorce take two was going to stick.

“Don’t let him fool you,” Carla says as she blusters into the room with such good timing that she must have been eavesdropping at the door. “You should have seen Dr. Cox’s bedside manner before he met his match. Meeting your soulmate has a way of evening you out.”

The Gomes kid is smiling because if I’ve met a match, she probably thinks she’s got that same _destiny_. 

“See that’s funny,” I say, “Because I could have sworn that me and Jordan flamed out r_e_ally publically. Twice. There were causalities and it wasn’t just—“

“I cannot actually believe you,” Carla says. “You really didn’t notice?”

“I have no idea who you’re talking about.” I draw my shoulders back and cross my arms over my chest. It’s n_o_t a defensive posture. At all. “What kind of a soulmate doesn’t bother to let me in on the secret? I mean, come _on_, I get paged to medical consults because of my unfortunately _very public _condition.”

Carla starts muttering in Spanish and it’s a little too low and a little too fast for my sixth-grade comprehension level. Behind us, the Gomes kid leans forward, a little too interested. When Carla finally breaks back into English she mumbles, “Figure this one out yourself.”

She moves to the patient who is staring with wide eyes. “Wait, what if that happens to me?”

“Sweetie, I’ve known you for two minutes and I can already tell you’ve got significantly more emotional sense in your pinky toe than this man has in his whole damn body.” She tilts conspiratorially towards the kid’s bed. “Besides he’ll put it together. Just give him a second.”

Damn her, she’s _right_. Because if it’s not Jordan and it wasn’t Ben, there’s really only one person it could be.

How the actual hell had Newbie kept that one to himself?

I must have said it out loud because Carla lets out a snort of laughter. And I flash back to that very first day with the new interns when this gawky baby doctor looked me in the eyes after I’d asked him why I should be nice to him.

_Because I might be your soulmate._

My response had been at least two minutes long and featured three different girl’s names.

“I’m sorry,” I say to Carla. “I have to go.”

“There it is,” Carla whispers to the Gomes kid, but I barely notice as I tear out of the room, interns scattering in my wake.

Newbie’s in the break room, pouring over a patient’s chart, a textbook propped up on his right. He looks up when I walk in, takes in the disheveled appearance and apparently dismisses it just as fast. “Did you get a chance to talk to Veronica? I told Lonnie he should page you.”

“I thought I was already speaking to Veronica.”

He tips the textbook closed. “Haha, I’m a girl.”

“Well, it’s no fun if you don’t play along, Cassandra.” I fold my arms. “And I thought the whole touchy feely bedside manner crap was your preferred style of doctoring.”

“Special circumstances,” Newbie says. “Did it work?”

“Did I talk a teenager down from the edge because she couldn’t download her one true love’s thoughts and feelings? Yes, by God I did, and if I’d had a slightly better heads up I could have explained that having an airheaded daydreamer who sputters random bits of nonsense at semi-regular intervals for a soulmate would be an actively terrible way to live my life.”

Newbie’s eyes widen and I catch him distractedly pinching himself, probably in an effort to confirm that no, this is not one of his daydreams. He pushes his chair back, eyes flickering to the door, but he has to know that I’m not actually mad.

After all, that’s how this soulmate thing’s supposed to work.

“You figured it out then? I…” He trails off, but his eyes don’t do the drifting thing. He’s genuinely at a loss. “Huh.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

He shrugs. “I tried at first. And then Carla told me about how the whole ABD thing left you super anti-soulmates and I kind of figured it would happen when it happened.”

“Probably didn’t hurt that you got a front row seat to my thoughts when you were an intern, either, huh?”

“That’s not how it works.” Newbie bites his bottom lip, shifting his feet. “I mean it is for some people, but not for me. I only get the big stuff. You know happy, sad, angry. Sesame Street flashcard emotions.”

“Newbie,” I start.

“You don’t match a lot,” he continues, voice rushed like he’s been sitting on this for a long time. “What you say and what you’re feeling. And that’s okay. I think you need someone who can see both parts of it.”

“And you need someone who can pull your heads out of the clouds.”

“See,” he says, a nervous smile flitting over his face. “We’re a good team.”

And the hell of it is, the kid’s right. And so is Carla. It helps to have someone around who has an immediate read on me. Who knows when to steer clear and how to step in. Christ, even my shrink had noticed, had implored me to keep this kid around if at all possible.

“Feel like you’re not getting much out of this arrangement, JD.”

His face lights up at the use of his name. I shove that into a box that I’ll unpack later. He’d never really seemed all that upset at the girl’s names, on occasion stepping into clarify _No, I’m Kimmie, _if there is confusion. Because, of course, he’s the only one I call girls names. Terms of endearment for the only one in the group I actually _liked_.

“I’d have bombed out of medicine if not for you,” JD says. “That first week. Just gone to pieces. Couldn’t even start an IV before you gave me a kick in the ass.”

“You’d have figured it out.”

He gives me a crooked smile. Because of course, he’s read the same literature I have. That soulmates tend to meet when they’re needed the most. At a crossroads. Newbie had been one breakdown away from deciding medicine wasn’t a career for him. I’d been one temper tantrum away from getting fired.

“You know,” he says softly. “Nothing has to change.”

Despite all the cards stacked against me, life right now isn’t bad. ABD, yeah, but who’d want that kid’s inner monologue cutting through your head every hour of the day. I have a kid who I love with Jordan, who, despite not being a soulmate, is probably my best living friend. By virtue of just _surviving_ my mentorship, Newbie seems to have set the roadmap for some of the newer interns and all of a sudden, my evaluations are calling me an _effective teacher_ instead of an _unrepentant jackass_. The changes had been small, but Carla’s right. He’d evened me out.

Newbie gives me a soft smile and for a second, I can see it all laid out in front of us. Finally getting my act together enough for a promotion and a chance to make some actual change in this place. JD finishing the last year of his residency. The nerdy, awkward, but ultimately charming way he’d try to steal moments in the on-call room. The way I’d probably let him. Jack coming up with some ridiculous name for him. J-Dad. Maybe something worse.

Thinking of it makes something long dead try to expand in my chest.

When I look up, JD’s drifted off, his mouth pursed thoughtfully, his eyes out of focus and I wonder if he’s seeing the same thing as me.

Or if he’s seeing the rest of it. Because the more cynical side of me sees that other path. The way JD would go from challenging me to resenting me and then back into cool indifference. The way no one waits forever, not even for a soulmate.

“There would be dueling monologues,” JD mumbles as he snaps out of fantasyland.

“God forbid I have to listen to yours, Mariska.”

I’d never minded the ABD, not really. Because at the end of the day, it means I get to choose. No one pulling at the edges of my brain. No one to let down. And even now, even seeing Newbie shift nervously, his Adam’s apple bobbing, looking very much like I could crush him with a couple words, it doesn't feel like something out of a story.

It’s a choice. It’s still a choice. I swallow. “What do you say we grab a beer after work, Newbie?”

I watch his face flash from elation, to suspicion and then settle into disbelief. “This better not be some kind of trick.”

I could have this.

I might _already_ have this.

“No trick, JD. Beers and possibly a long awkward discussion about your apparently being my soulmate.”

JD beams and it takes me a while because most people don’t look forward to long awkward discussions until I remember the second half of the statement. When he sees my glare, he rearranges his face into something contrite and says, “I love long awkward discussions.”

“Yeah, well, I’d love a drink.”

“Match made in heaven,” he chirps, gathers up the last of his books and spins back into the fray of the hospital.

I’m left alone in the break room, mouth still open, God help me on the verge of agreeing with the annoying bastard.


End file.
